St. John the Baptist

By instinct Vittoria was more a modeller than a carver; that is, he was more at ease in sculpture “made by adding” (bronze, terracotta...) than in sculpture made by “taking away” (marble) or, better, the stylistic qualities peculiar to his art, namely pictorialism, luministic values and tactile sensibility, found natural and easy expression in clay, a docile, yielding material. The statuette of the Baptist adorns a holy-water stoup in the Venetian church of S. Francesco della Vigna, but the decorative purpose of the small bronze (probably cast around 1585) takes second place, indeed goes unsuspected, in relation to the singing expressiveness of the gesture, still mindful of a Michelangelesque scheme, and to the subtlety and agility of the modelling.